The Oscars is tonight, and the celebs are likely getting made up and strapped into their tuxes and dresses as we speak.

Most of us colloquially call them Oscars, but their official name is the Academy Awards.

The Academy are the ones who vote for the winners, and while it may seem like a mysterious group, it’s made up of people who you probably follow and recognise.

(Picture: ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images)

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Scienceswas made up of 5,783 members as of 2012. However, after the #OscarsSoWhite campaign that began a few back, they’ve invited over 1,500 new members.

The plan with these new invites was to bring in people from different backgrounds and races, which seems to be making a small difference given the better representation of people of colour and women in the last two years.

All of these people are involved in the film industry, with over half of them being active filmmakers.

Members vote in their own fields. So, for example, directors would vote for best director and so on and so forth. However, everyone in the Academy has a say in who wins Best Picture.

(Picture: DEAN TREML/AFP/Getty Images)

There are a few caveats to this. In categories which have a specialism – like Foreign Language Film and Animated Feature Film – there are different rules and regulations that voters must comply with.

Filmmakers can vote by post or online, the majority using the latter method for its ease.

Once the votes are cast, the auditing firm PWC uses a weighting system to decide on the five nominees from each category.

There is no set number of votes a film or person needs to make it into the nomination – it all depends on the algorithm.